


In His Arms

by valis2



Category: Riptide (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Drama, Established Relationship, Futurefic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-04
Updated: 2010-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-07 23:21:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valis2/pseuds/valis2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick is in the wrong place at the wrong time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In His Arms

**Author's Note:**

> This contains difficult subject matter. SPOILER: The plot contains a shooting at a public place. Minor character death (not the boys).  
> A huge thank you to Little Tristan for supplying pertinent details, and to Catyah for her constant support.

Daniel Ketterman, age thirty-seven, is standing in the administrative offices of Camp Pendleton. He is laughing at a joke. It is January. He is trying not to forget to pick up milk on the way home. He is waiting for his final discharge papers to be processed. It is the fourth of February, 1991.

He tells a joke of his own. Two helo pilots are standing in between him and the nearest desk, Ken with his hands in his pockets, Nick Ryder with arms crossed. They're good guys, good pilots, and he's glad they're with him for his final walk to Admin. With his two little girls getting bigger, he doesn't have time for Reserve duty any longer.

He's nearing the punchline. He hears a door open behind him, and a hiss as the hydraulic arm pulls it shut again. Nick's grinning like he's heard this one before, but Ken's face is scrunched in concentration as he tries to listen, his good ear tilted slightly forward. Milk, Danny thinks, have to remember milk.

The bullet enters the back of his skull and exits through his right cheekbone. There's no time for surprise or grand speeches. His vision greys to black and he falls to the floor, dead.

* * *

Sandi Wells, age twenty-two, is standing in the administrative offices of Camp Pendleton. There is nothing in her head except for a bell, tolling. Each strike of the clapper is louder than the last until she thinks her entire being must shatter.

* * *

Nick Ryder, age forty-one, is standing in the administrative offices of Camp Pendleton. Danny is telling a joke, and then suddenly part of his face is missing. The gunshot is loud and jarring. Ken is shouting to get down, and Nick reaches for Danny as he—as Danny's body slumps to the ground. More gunshots. A fiery line draws itself across his biceps. He hears a terrific clanging noise and realizes that someone has thrown a typewriter across the room. He is trying to drag Danny's body out of the line of fire. He is counting the number of shots. The smell of gunpowder and blood is unpleasantly familiar.

Fifteenth shot. He wonders whether there will be a reload. He looks up. Ken is on the ground, holding his leg. Running forward, he grabs him under the armpits and hauls backwards until he's behind a desk. There are shouts. He sees the flash of white on green. MPs. The shooter's clip is empty. It has to be. He remembers the drill; get the suspect to drop the weapon first. Kick it away from them. The yelling is getting louder.

More gunshots. Nick stays with Ken, hovers over him, the desk blocking his view. He peers out from the side and sees a body on the floor. Clouds of pale blond hair streaked with blood. The gun has fallen out of her hand, lying just out of reach of her long, delicate fingers.

There is time for one long breath, and then chaos descends. People are everywhere. Questions. Interrogations. An MP is holding a bandage to Ken's leg. Nick tries to organize his thoughts, put events into logical order. Statement. The room is too cool. He feels strange, as if he's been disconnected from the events. From himself.

Coffee in his hand. He delivers the statement again, this time to a short, balding career military man. A paramedic finishes dressing the graze on his arm. He takes another sip of the coffee and wishes for Cody. There is a flare of heat in his chest. He struggles to get himself back under control.

Another MP approaches. "Sir, we attempted to contact someone at the number listed on your file, but the line seems to be out of order."

Nick blinks, nods. Murray is on his second honeymoon with Gloria, and Cody has probably taken the _Riptide_ out into the sea. Cody.

The lifer tries to coach him on how to say "No comment" to the press, but Nick is an expert on that already. He has to give his statement one more time and then he leaves.

He avoids the reporters. Fires up the 'Vette, and wishes he had come up in Mimi instead. He hopes they don't trace his license plate.

The day is cool and overcast. Grey as his thoughts.

It is an hour and a half drive to King Harbor, and he remembers none of it. He doesn't truly breathe until he's at the pier, and he sees Cody hooking up the phone line, looking tanned and golden and alive. Nick's steps echo on the companionway, awkward and hollow.

Cody looks up, and his face registers surprise at first, and then delight, and then fear. He sprints toward him and grabs him bodily. "What happened to your arm? Why are you back?"

There are no words to tell Cody what has happened, the blood, the light leaving Danny's eyes. He is frozen inside. Cody's hands are running up and down his body, and he looks frantic. "Nick, tell me what's going on."

Cody's voice. His presence. Nick is trembling, and then Cody's hands are guiding him aboard the _Riptide_. The phone is ringing and ringing. Cody helps him take off his shirt, his pants, gets him into the bunk.

The phone is still ringing, and he winces. Cody rushes to pick it up. "Hello?" He pauses. "Murray, look, this isn't the best time—"

If he listens hard enough, he can almost hear Murray's side of the conversation, a tinny noise that vibrates in the air.

"At Camp Pendleton?" A look of horror passes over Cody's face. "When?" There's a long pause. "Yes, well, Nick's here, but he's not—Yes, Murray, he's okay, he's—there's a graze on his arm, but it's small. He's okay. Murray, stop!" Cody shouts into the receiver with unusual agitation. "He's fine." Another pause. "Look, he just showed up and I'm still sorting things out—" Pause. "Murray, I don't think..." He looks over at Nick, his eyes full of worry. "I don't think that's a good idea. I think you should stay in Bermuda and enjoy your vacation. I mean, after how the first one ended..." Another pause. "I know, and we both love you too, I mean, both you and Gloria, but I think Nick would feel really guilty if you came back early. And guilt isn't something Nick needs right now..." He nods, as if Murray could see him somehow. "I'll let you know as soon as I know more. Give our love to Gloria." He hangs up, and then dials another number as he walks out of the room with the phone.

Nick tries to count his breaths, his even, slow breaths, but they aren't cooperating. Sometimes they speed up. Sometimes they hitch. He is wound too tightly. There's a thick, icy fog settling in his chest, and he is cold and he knows that somewhere he is feeling miserable, though he can't seem to find it. He is floating. Cody is back, and something warm is wrapped around his bare feet, and then on the back of his neck, and the covers are pulled up to his neck, and then Cody sits down next to him on the bunk and strokes his hair.

In any other situation this would make things right.

He feels guilty that it doesn't. Or at least, he knows that he should, but he can't seem to locate it. His heart seems to have vanished. He is breathing and thinking, but there is no feeling.

He feels shaky and strange. Doc Harris is there, suddenly, and he grits his teeth as the bandages on his throbbing arm are checked and then redressed. Fingers on his wrist take his pulse. Languid brown eyes watch him. Everything seems to be separating. Fraying.

There is a sharp pain in his hip, the bite of a needle, and then it all begins to grey, and he spirals down into opaque, thick clouds.

* * *

Cody Allen, age forty-two, is standing in the salon of the _Riptide_. Doc Harris is writing things down, prescriptions, directions, and Cody can feel the tension strumming in his tendons. He can barely stay still. He turned on the TV while the doc was doing his evaluation, and now that he knows the story—at least the story that's been released to the press—he's even more worried. He knows that the shooter was named Sandi Wells, and that her husband, a Marine, was killed in Saudi Arabia just yesterday. Reporters are trying to uncover her life story. There are photos of them on their wedding day. There are interviews with bewildered neighbors.

There is Nick, sedated to the gills, lying in a bunk in the next room with a bullet graze on his arm.

Four dead. Six injured, including Nick. Cody shivers, and Doc Harris puts his hand on his arm, looks at him serenely. "He'll be fine," he says, giving him a crooked smile and then leaving.

Cody takes a deep breath, and then another. The prescriptions are on the table. He knows Nick won't want to take them, but he'll have to take the antibiotics, at the very least.

He can't believe how close this was. Even worse, he can't believe that he was out in the ocean, fishing, enjoying himself, soaking up the slice of sun through the clouds, all while Nick was being shot at by a madwoman. Another shiver travels up his legs, makes him clutch at the table for support.

It is all so ironic. They had given up the detective agency because it was too dangerous, because they were tired of being shot at. Cody feels sick to his stomach that giving Nick up to Uncle Sam for two weeks a year turned out to be even more dangerous than having the agency.

He knows he should get the prescriptions filled, but he can't help it, he doesn't want to leave Nick. Not for a minute.

He tries to do something useful, tries to clean up and make chicken soup and write lists, but it's all useless. He goes back down into their room and watches Nick breathe instead.

* * *

Nick is lying down. His eyelids don't seem to be responding, and he gives up trying to open them.

He's warm. Wrapped in blankets. He can tell he's on the _Riptide_; the rocking is unmistakable.

Behind him, there is warmth. He exhales, and feels the strong arms that hold him shift slightly. He feels a kiss pressed to the top of his head.

He manages to get one eye open, but the other takes a bit more work. It is dark out, and it must be extremely late; the harbor is nearly silent, except for the occasional whistle of a sailboat mast. His mouth is dry.

Cody is stroking his right arm, soft and gentle, and he wonders how long he has been sitting here, crammed at the end of the bunk, holding him. He tries to sit up, but the room spins, and Cody pulls him back down into his arms, murmuring something comforting.

Danny is dead. That thought cuts through everything, hits him like an icy knife in the heart. He knows he will never forget the look on his face. He shudders, and Cody draws him closer still, quiet and strong.

"Love you," whispers Cody.

Nick coughs, and takes a sip of water from a glass perched on the nightstand. "Love you, too," he says. He can't help but think of Danny's wife, and their love, and how it's gone. He shudders again.

"You came home to me," says Cody. "You're here now. You're alive. I know you're thinking about what happened, and I know it hurts—"

"Danny—"

"Don't feel guilty you're alive." Cody's hand is on his neck, lightly tracing patterns, and he presses another kiss to the top of Nick's head. "Just—please, Nick. Not now." His tone is fierce but there is an undercurrent of fragility that makes his heart ache.

Nick reaches up with his hand, takes Cody's fingers into his own, kisses them. There's a muffled sob, and then Cody clutches him tightly for a long moment while he barely breathes, but then it's over. The ice in his heart thaws. There is warmth now. There is Cody. It doesn't erase all of the pain, but for tonight, he lets it go, lets himself drift in Cody's arms.

Nick closes his eyes, lets the bright gold of Cody's love chase the ghosts away.


End file.
